The highly competitive nature of the self-service retail industry requires stores to display and offer for sale a wide variety of products in a visually pleasing and efficient manner. Merchandising display racks for storing products and promoting their sale are well known in the art. One frequently used type of display rack designed to increase the merchandising display capacity of a self-service retail store is a self-supporting or freestanding "point of sale" display. Commonly, this type of display unit is employed to showcase newer products and is often supplied to the retailer by the product manufacturer in order to effectively display the manufacturer's particular goods. A key advantage of this type of display unit is its capability of displaying product wherever sufficient retail floor space permits. Accordingly, such freestanding merchandising displays are readily capable of being positioned in hightraffic locations to allow for maximum visibility and the greatest exposure of the displayed products to potential customers.
Additionally, it is common in the art to use various pegboard display systems to exhibit retail products and other items. In this type of display system, one or more upright pegboard supports, or other similar display panels having a plurality of uniformly spaced holes, are used to provide a vertical mounting system. The panels generally have a front surface forming a background for the displayed products. The spaced holes are provided to support brackets, fixtures, and hangers of various configurations and sizes. Typically, these fixtures include one or more prongs configured to selectively engage corresponding mounting holes in the display panels, thus securely retaining the fixtures or brackets thereon so that they may support and display products.
One limitation present in various conventional merchandising display systems is their inability to effectively present information in conjunction with the displayed products. Information that is often made more useful by being place in close proximity to the displayed product includes pricing information, inventory control and reordering information, and product names and descriptions. For example, it is common in conventional commercial display devices containing walking canes to store a variety of different canes on one display device. Examples of such display racks include FUTUROO.RTM. Cane Department #390040 and FUTURO.RTM. Pegged Cane Display #390041.
Since conventional cane display racks are not compartmentalized, walking canes hung thereon tend to become intermixed over time as customers handle the canes, thus making it more difficult for later customers to readily identify and select appropriate products. Further, because the canes have no designated storage locations on conventional walking cane display racks, it has been impossible to provide signs that present information about each cane in such a way as to ensure that information is displayed in a convenient location in close proximity to the cane it describes.